


let it go

by rendcollective



Category: Frozen (2013)
Genre: Elsa Has Issues, Elsanna Week, F/M, Gen, POV Elsa
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-29
Updated: 2015-05-29
Packaged: 2018-04-01 19:09:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4031299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rendcollective/pseuds/rendcollective
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>3rd person past, POV Elsa, following her journey to acceptance of herself and her power from Anna's first injury to their old age, by the time Anna and Kristoff are grandparents!</p>
            </blockquote>





	let it go

**Author's Note:**

> I was originally gonna do a poly marriage (Anna/Kristoff/some lady), but Anna/Kristoff felt more organic to me. Don't worry. Poly relationships will have their moment. It's me we're talking about, after all.

_**I.**_ Let it go.

 

 _ **II.**_  She always had, hadn't she?

In the days after Anna's healing, she pleaded with her parents on her knees, wailing and bargaining. She hadn't meant it. She loved Anna. She loved her so much. Who was she but a big sister, a playmate, a partner in crime?

They nearly gave in, until her tears froze solid on her face. After that, every time, they pried her off their ankles and sat her in a chair. "Let it go, Elsa," they said, their voices broken but unyielding. "Just let it go."

 

 _ **III.**_  It was the gloves she hated the most. Her hands sweated right through them: her palms slippery, her fingers plump with heat. They were like a second skin, limp and clinging. She wanted, she needed to rip them off and wipe the perspiration on a towel, on her dress, on the floor if she had to. She learned, though. The first few times the sweat froze anything she touched.

After that, it only turned to frost, a chilling rime that caked her hands like white loam. She taught herself to quell the panicked stuffiness that rose up in every part of her: her throat, her chest, her stomach, every inch of her shrieked to be free. She trained the claustrophobia away, wished off the crawling feeling of being shackled until it became only a gnawing whisper, and then, mercifully, just a background noise, constant and negligible as the sound of her own breathing.

 

 _ **IV.**_  When word came, it was as if a part of her had expected it. As if it had always known. To water she had been born, and to water her mother and father went. After all, treachery writhed in all of water's forms. Warmest, it swallowed her parents whole, a massive maw chomping and licking: crushing waves and a tongue flecked with foam, reaching, wrapping, enveloping. Coldest, it lanced little sisters through the heart, a violent white seed that unfurled like a coursing virus. Water claimed her entire family, and she was a malediction with feet: unwilling carrier of inevitable perils, powerless host whose blood ran white.

She tried to freeze herself solid, but even encased in ice, she could still breathe. She thawed herself and refused to bathe for a month.

 

 _ **V.**_  It was the air she’d always loved the most: the chilling wash against her skin, a dry splash that surged into her innermost parts and swept away all that cowered and scurried and clumped. Heat was an amber, arresting and embracing as a pair of velvet gloves; but the cold had a way of stripping everything away until she was no longer quiet step, folded hands, and bowed head, but sharp as lightning, lancing as a star. Tonight, the cold swirled into her, sought out all within her that had grown dull, and polished and sharpened and washed until she sparkled. She straightened her back. She held up her head. She unclasped her hands.

She smiled.

 

 _ **VI.**_  On the mountain, there were no walls; no squeaking bedroom floor, no maids with curious beady eyes and no parents with faces lined by fear. Instead there was silence, plump, bursting and dissolving between fingertips. There was the earth, hurtling and spinning as everyone slept, fully aware of its immensity, but: no longer ashamed. All perils were honest here. Dangers warned afar off in gleams and glows, did not apologize for themselves.

They were forces of nature: the owl's wicked beak, the earth's sloping terrain, the pines' cracking limbs. They were dazzlingly beautiful, and they were fatal. They were dazzlingly beautiful, because they were fatal.

She tore off her gloves.

 

 _ **VII.** _  She remembered Olaf, alright: his crooked little carrot nose, the overbite her hands had patted into shape as Anna's poked his eyes into place. The man she did not know, but his face was solid and pale, his hair frosted with snow, his eyes wide.

But this Anna was simultaneously foreign and familiar, and it nearly broke her. There was so much warmth in her eyes, but fear swirled too. Was this what it was like, to be an eighteen year-old force of nature? At its best, would the terror only ever be wonder?

 

 _ **VIII.**_  When the prince stood over her with knife flashing, she did not try to run. It glittered white silver, gorgeous in all its danger. She hoped he aimed for the heart.

 

 _ **IX.**_  She canceled trade with the Southern Isles. She scheduled another coronation ceremony, more banquets. She took care of the ice sculptures this time. She drafted a formal statement to the people of Arendelle, apologetic but not ashamed, clear and confident. She made sure to use a lot of hand gestures.

She had a snowball fight with Anna and Olaf, using Olaf. Olaf called it "disrespectful." Anna called it "hilarious." She invited Flynn and Rapunzel over, apologizing for the ruckus they'd had to endure at the first coronation. They blew it off, saying they understood royal fiascos like that. They talked about her powers, insisting on some conspiracy theory about a snow flower.

There were assassination attempts, as expected; rumors, gossip, a near revolt. No one, the people said, should have such power over nature and kingdom alike. No one could wield such ability and be fully human in all rights. Witch, they called her. God, they called her. Accursed, unnatural, malevolent, scheming. She quelled the whispers. She addressed the shouts. She made time to work with the ice farmers once a month, so they might learn she too was human. She froze the assassins, then apologized to those who had not been hired and pardoned them of their crimes. She sent the rest back to the Southern Isles shivering.

She watched Olaf officiate Anna's wedding; Anna was scintillating. Kristoff, too, dazzled: he wore a white suit, blushing at the trolls' hoarse whoops from the back row.

 

 _ **X.**_  She is old now, weathered but not tired. Kristoff has long stopped making dad jokes to his children, but he's moved on to grandpa jokes, and he is earning groans of disapproval from the next room over. Anna is asleep in bed next to her, snoring obnoxiously. Smiling, she pokes Anna in the nose.

"Huh?" Anna drawls, wiping drool from her mouth.

Elsa grins.

"Do you wanna build a snowman?"


End file.
